Shadow Priest Rotation and Priorities

This section of the Shadow Priest guide provides an overview of all spec abilities, when and how to use them. The author of this guide is djriff, Moderator on HowToPriest. If you want to learn more about me or my work with the shadow priest community, check out H2P.

Offensive Cooldowns

Defensive Abilities and Cooldowns

- Pacifies you, reducing all incoming damage by a large amount of stopping the drain of and the increase of stacks.

- Reduces all threat, making enemies less likely to attack you.

- Places a shield on the target.

- Attempt to interrupt spell cast from a target and silencing it for a brief period of time.

- Heals the target for a high amount of HP, but leaving a damage over time effect for half that amount on it. The DoT effect is consumed by damage taken by the target.

- Converts part of all single-target damage dealt into healing to you and other allies for a brief duration.

Utility Spells

- Controls the mind of the target, allowing you to control its actions.

- Removes a benefitial magic effect from an enemy.

- Removes a disease effect from an ally.

- Removes all magical effects from both allies and enemies in a radius.

- Fears all enemies around you for a small period of time.

- Paralyzes an undead enemy for a large period of time.

- Levitates the target, causing it float in the air and reduces fall speed.

- View the world through the target's eyes.

Passive Abilities

- Critical strike ticks from generate an apparition that flies over the target, dealing small amount of damage.

- Activated by , twists your , increasing further its bonus to shadow damage, granting access to , reducing the cooldown from and increasing your haste for every second you spend in this form. Your will start draining increasingly the longer you stay in this form, which is ended by reaching 0 .

- When deals damage to a target affected by it also deals damage to all other targets around it, generating per target hit.

Spell Priorities

You should maintain at all times. This is automatically applied when you exit voidform, but can be manually activated if needed.

As a Shadow Priest, you will be casting abilities which generate Insanity, and when you reach 100 Insanity, you can activate which then affects your spell priorities. is the ability which activates .

increases all damage dealt by 20%, reduces the cooldown on Mind Blast by 3 seconds, and grants an additional 1% Haste every 1 sec. The Haste buff persists for a minute after Voidform ends; Voidform will end when your Insanity rapidly drains to 0.

Rotation/Priority

Surrender To Madness

You want to use as soon as possible to prolong your final Voidform. You also will want to pop after your second , current simulations show this talent should only be taken on short fights.

The rotation will change slightly from the regular groove you're use to. Once you hit ~130% haste will be out of sync so your rotation outside of will be:

> > > Filler

Essentially you will be casting every other GCD.

For Solo Questing

As a shadow priest you use have a lot of survivability and could face tank quite a lot of damage. Unfortunately with the release of legion, much has changed. You'll have to make extensive use of and while questing. If you take you can face tank quite a bit of damage is recommended when soloing 40m+ elites.

Legendaries

: While this doesn't necessarily change the rotation, you will still need to cast every 10 seconds to proc .

: should always be popped in , doesn't change the rotation

: Doesn't effect the rotation since you regularly cast , in rare situations it is worth holding off casting , such as Bloods on Tich.

Offensive/Defensive Cooldowns

Offensive Cooldowns

: stops all insanity loss while channeling it. It scales excellently with Haste and should be used when you have extremely high haste from either , , //, , or a proc. A special note about , when used your current Insanity drain rate is snapshotted, for 4 seconds you channel this spell, you gain stacks of , but do not gain the increase in degeneration. It's best to use this at the beginning of your cycle even without procs unless you know stuff will be coming up before it is off CD.

: Summons a pet to attack your target for 12 seconds with a 3m cooldown. Best used when you have a lot of haste that will last the 12 seconds.

Defensive Cooldowns

: The big personal cooldown for shadow. Baseline it's at 60% damage reduction. Lasts 6 seconds on a 2m cooldown (90s with Artifact traits). Also, stops all insanity loss and stops stacks increasing while it's active. Very useful for surviving things that would otherwise kill you. It's also useful if you need to extend a few more seconds while waiting for to come off of CD or you have to move for a mechanic.

: Drops all threat for 10 seconds, 30 seconds cooldown. Should be used on the pull since it doesn't trigger the GCD as well as anytime you accidentally pull threat.

: Place a shield on the target, good for a little bit of self-healing when needed. Great for movement phases if you have nothing else.

: The raid wide cooldown for shadow. For 12 seconds you heal a target for a percent of the damage that you do. Talents and a Legendary item can increase this effect. Highly recommended to only use during Voidform. Should use when the healing is needed or it's called for.

Utility Spells/Abilities

: While largely useless in Raid/Dungeon instances, in the open world this spell allows you to control a target for 1m, allowing you to use their skills however you do not control your character while doing this. If taking the talent it gives you a pseudo pet for the duration, very helpful when soloing outdoor content.

: The area of effect fear. This is on a 1m cooldown that makes up to 5 targets flee for 8 seconds. Usually, a last ditch survival resort and should never be used in a Dungeon/Raid.

: s all magical effects in a 10 yard radius for up to 10 allies or 1 beneficial magic effect from up to 10 enemies. Should use when your group is suffering from a debuff.

: a beneficial magic effect from the target enemy. Should be used when needed.

: Purifies a disease from a friendly target. Should be used when needed.

: Shackle an undead target for 1m. Should be used as CC similar to when needed.

Mastering your Shadow Priest

Here are some tips and tricks you can use to squeeze out a bit extra DPS.

should be popped at 20 stacks of . Ideally, this will get you to 40 stacks of Voidform (80% extra dot damage due to .

You should use with 12 seconds left on PI, preferably overlapping when you have 12 seconds of // and .

Shadow Priests have quite a lot of mobility, be sure to stutter step with as much as possible to minimize movement. For example moving to the left side of the room on Chronomatic Anaomaly on Mythic knowing the add will spawn there soon thus minimizing your movement.

At 4+ targets it is no longer worth using as it is a DPS and an Insanity Per Second loss.